Something to Ponder

Fast Llamas, 

This poem is to be read first in order, from top to bottom.

Then, read it again, from the bottom to the top.  This poem is a literal exercise in reframing. The facts (the words on the page) don't change, but the way you look at them (the direction you read) changes everything. This is the core principle of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and a crucial life skill for building resilience.

The first time round - my reality shaped my attitude - While the second round is my my attitude shapes my being 

Let's Talk Vocab

Fast Llamas, 
Hey, today we talking about a reading strategy called, 10 Most Important Words. In social studies, primary sources are killers for kids. This strategy aims to help kids decipher through all those vocabulary words and get to talking about them.  While I am using for Social Studies, every content can benefit from this strategy to get kids talking, build word walls, assess existing knowledge, teach kids to think and review.

Here is the strategy bit by bit:
Students identify the ten key terms or ideas from a passage and explain why each is important. 

Part 1: Introduction & Strategy Script

Warm-Up: Ask students: "If you had to describe the game of basketball using only three words, what would they be?" Have a few students share and explain why they chose those words.

Introduce the Strategy:

“Your job is to act like a detective and find the 10 words that hold all the clues. These can't be 'filler' words like 'and', 'the', or 'is'. They must be words that are essential to the meaning. If you took them out, the passage wouldn't make sense.

The hardest part isn't finding 10 words—it's only picking 10. This forces you to decide what is most important.”

1. Provide students with a table for their words
2. Have students read a passage.
3. On the second reading of the passage, students circle 10 words they believe are important to understand the text.
4. Students list their words on the provided table and justify 5 out of the 10.
5. Discuss whole group. 

Here is an example of a passage:

Passage: Bridges and Borders: Comparing Central and South America

Central America is a narrow stretch of countries and islands that links North and South America, where people live in both tropical rainforests and small mountain towns and where cultures mix Indigenous, European, African, and Asian traditions; South America is a vast continent with the towering Andes, the wide Amazon rainforest, and large countries like Brazil and Argentina, offering more varied climates and bigger cities. Both regions share languages (mostly Spanish and Portuguese), foods like corn and plantains, and histories shaped by colonization and Indigenous resistance, but they differ in size, geography, and how people make a living—many Central Americans farm on smaller plots or work in coastal trade, while South America has huge agricultural estates, major mining industries, and extensive river systems that shape travel and settlement.

Since vocabulary can be tricky for kids, this focus on terms needed to understand the text is great practice.  Try it out!  

A quick poem

Fast Llamas,

When change is necessary and doesn't come easy, remember that change sticks when we learn from it.

Recognize your patterns, are you making mistakes without awareness?  What habits are causing you to take the easy road and avoid taking responsibility.  You have what I call "respondability", the ability to choose how you respond.  That will give you freedom and finally power over your own life.  Change is a process, not a single moment.

Body Mnemonics

Hey Fast Llamas,

Let's talk about movement and the power for making memory. In this strategy, students physically move to demonstrate or sort information to strengthen memory. This ties into the research connecting long term memory and physical activity. There is a mind body connection... I believe the saying goes, "when I move my body, I move my mind". Pretty powerful stuff right there! How can we harness this valuable strategy in our classrooms? You got it, get students to move. Movement is a powerful type of mnemonic device. Let's dive deeper.

There are two premises in play here:

1. using gesturing to depict vocabulary terms or events

These gesturing techniques use specific actions, like touching parts of your body or tracing shapes, to create a physical association with the information you want to remember. Have students create representations, demonstrating the words.

Examples

• Using your knuckles to count the days in a month.
• Using gestures to remember vocabulary - like the term - "Manifest Destiny" with the gesture: "Stretch your arms wide as if showing the whole continent."
• Using gestures to remember the states of matter, types of precipitation or parts of a story.
• Touching different parts of your body for each item on a list.
• Tracing the shape of an object in the air with your finger.
• Acting out math word problems to better understand them.
• Using hand gestures while learning a new language.
• Creating physical hand signals to recall, like the shape of the state of texas for regions.
  
  
  

2. Moving or walking while learning

• Moving counterclockwise in a room to learn about each phase of the lunar cycle
• Walking while brainstorming to improve creativity.
• Specific activities include hopping across a number line or using body twisters for new concepts.
• Using different parts of the room while reviewing 
• Gallery walks for notes
• Carousel - moving from station to station - adding feedback

All the research conducted on movement suggest that these teacher moves
benefit our students' learning and retention of new material. Also, they can provide students with opportunities to make personal connections to the content. A win-win for the teacher and the students. Does this mean we should be creating mnemonics every day for every new piece of content we teach? “Whoa! Slow down there, tiger!” Based on our current understanding of this type of mnemonic device, when might it be appropriate to use this teacher move? Think about using this strategically, when it garners the best student learning outcome. See you next time!

Fast Llamas,

Today we shift from behavioral strategies to cognitive ones.  When I think of cognitive engagement, I have to recall the four ways in which we basically think with our brains.  

Let's call them the Brain Basics.

1. Firing - 🔥

    Neurons that fire together, wire together.  

2. Attending - 🧠

    Attention is necessary for learning

3. Connecting - 🧩

    We make meaning by connecting to existing knowledge.

4. Imaging 📷

    Mental imaging supports understanding. 
  
While planning my lessons, I am aware of these brain basics  - if my students are talking, moving, collaborating, writing, drawing, summarizing, recalling, organizing, sequencing, explaining (you get the picture) - they are making meaning and they are thinking critically.  They are engaged cognitively.  Everyday students have opportunities to:

    1. Move

    2. Collaborate and 

    3. Engage with media of some sort (think lots of visuals for example)

What's great is the activities do not have to be these grand, big, huge lessons.  They are can small activities, chunked throughout the lesson that get kids doing the learning, and me the teacher guiding and facilitating.  Think about student carrying the cognitive workload and what that would look like.  If I give my students notes on particular topic - WHAT will they be doing with the information? If I give my students a reading activity - HOW will they use that information?  I want to make sure my students have ample opportunities to learn with others and connect what they know with the new information.

I also want to make sure that as I am explicitly teaching that I build opportunities for discussion by asking open ended questions and use Wait Time.  

PAWE is a strategy what is fantastic strategy to use for when you want to build in this type of teaching.

P - Prompt - pique curiosity and get their attention! 

    "we have been talking about the US Constitution" Here we can tap into existing knowledge.  (BB #2 and BB #3)

A - Ask - ask the question - open ended, use visuals to help make meaning (BB #4)

W - WAIT - use wait time, allow students to collaborate and talk, learn from others.  Get those neurons firing. (BB #1)

E - Elicit - pull and stretch out the answers - ask for similarities, more examples, differences, get the students to tell you more! Here the meaning is being made as students connect what they already know to new learning.  (BB 1 - 4 in play here)  celebrate the answers with praise!

When you think about it, isn't this a lot more engaging for you and for the students than just cold calling the same students over and over again?

Next in this series, we tap into our first cognitive strategy - Purposeful Movement. 

 Hey, Fast Llama's,

I was walking in HEB yesterday and realized they have an entire section devoted to organization and cleaning in their "seasonal section". This got me thinking that the new year is for getting organized and do that "Spring Cleaning"! How does that apply to us at school?

So let's talk about your classroom. Let's change that thinking to an "environment". Brain based education studies note that the brain works best when it is not under stress. You release more dopamine and thus retain more information when don't feel fear or anxiety. So, focus on making your classroom aesthetically pleasing. I use table lamp and turn off the fluorescent lights. Once you have taught in a room lit this way, you don't want to go back. It is very easy on the eyes. Doing any spring cleaning at home and are changing out lamps? Bring your old ones to school! When I was teaching at Spillane, I had a huge classroom (I am not bragging, lol). It was windowless, so it took quite a bit of lamps to get it lit the best for my students. It took years of collecting lamps from friends, from discount stores and garage sales. So, let your collecting begin. Also, I got my first period to turn on the lamps for me... they liked it.

Consider adding plants. Plants serve two purposes, one, plants release oxygen and filter out pollutants, second, plants are pleasing and calming. Now for the walls... When I began teaching, I put up every poster I could find. Free posters from NASA, (they will give you any if you ask), posters I purchased and posters I created. They were everywhere. Now this is amazing that I admit this, since I went to college to study education during the heyday of Madeline Hunter. Hunter was the be all, end all of education during this time. She was the guru. And, she was good. I am still referring to her. Anyway, Madeline Hunter, said, your walls should be blank, with bursting and overflowing cabinets. In other words, only put the posters out that you are using at the moment, then put them away when the unit is done. So, be purposeful about your posters.

As the year progresses, add posters, remove posters, but keep what "icon poster and/or anchor charts" of specific info you want to keep on the forefront of the students minds. On these posters are items that I want to continue to recap and review with students.

Another educational strategist that I studied in college, who still speaks to me is Harry Wong. One of his suggestions is to put on a bulletin board a timeline of yourself. Start with a baby picture, definitely one of the age of the kids you teach, a high school or college, husband, etc. A story of your life. Kids love it and you will see them looking at them. It's just another way to make a connection with them. And that's what "setting the stage" is all about, making the kids feel invited into your learning environment, establishing a relationship with them. Then, once you have captured them, then the learning can begin.

 Fast Llamas, 

I was privy to a conversation a colleague was having with a student teacher in our building the other day.  They were talking about classroom management and the student teacher asked and I paraphrase, "will there ever be a time that the students behavior won't have to be managed?"  This got me thinking and the answer is "yes and no".  Middle school students are just that, they are teenagers and their brains won't be fully developed until they are much older.  So, we use this time that we have with them to teach them the ways of success.  But, by February, most of your procedures, systems and routines are put into place... unless...
1. They are too complicated - procedures should be "engineered to be efficient" (Lemov, 2015).  Procedures should be the simplest way to complete a task.  Script out the most critical routines in your classroom.  What do they look like?  What are your expectations?  How will you know when students are successful?  How will the students know they are successful?
Normal Systems:
a. how to ask a question
b. how to answer a question
c.  how to have a discussion
d.  moving materials
e. note taking
f. turn and talk
g. independent work
h. how to test
i. managing behavior
j. moving students
2.  You did not take the time to practice in the beginning - taking the time to practice to make procedures quick with little narration will come back to haunt you.  Take the time to plan out to detail and then practice with students always will pay off.   Make an anchor chart of the expectations for students and refer to the anchor chart often.  
3.  You don't have key phrases planned out - here comes planning again.  Clarity and specificity are king here.
And I am not just talking about procedures and routines for behavior.  Academic procedures are worth practicing too.   Like using RULER, used to strategize test taking skills or a CHECK-X strategy, these are done every time with fidelity.  
To move from procedure to routine to system takes patience and time, but it will pay off .  
Here are some tips from Teach Like a Champion:
1.  Number the steps - chunk them as you narrate, first, stand up, second, turn and face me... etc.
2. Model and describe - give certain procedures a moniker - like "vertical hand"  
3. Practice
4.  Reflect on the most common questions or requests students have and systemize these.
5. Transfer Ownership 
The Slumps:
Sometimes there is a need to rectify or reset what's happening in your classroom.  Don't think since it is the middle of the year that some systems need your attention.  While most procedures and routines are established at the beginning of the school year, it is never too late to create a new one or review an existing one.  
Here are some tips, again from Teach Like a Champion:
1.  Invent a peg - Connect the reset to a new goal, such as a big field trip or 34 days until STAAR.
2.  Review procedures before and after a big break.
3.  Heart to Heart - tell the students the reason to a reset.  Maybe they (and you) have gotten sloppy and you are losing valuable learning time, just be honest.
4.  Practice  - let students take the lead
5.  Praise - Give props that are quick, universal and enthusiastic.  
Examples of Props:
a. snaps
b. power whooshes
c. the hitter  - pretend to toss a baseball and hit it for a homerun
d.  hot pepper - pretend hold and eat a hot pepper and say "ssss"
Here are a few example videos, the examples are from elementary, but I believe they will work for any age, because middle school kids are just kids in big bodies.  

References:
Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.